Plan would give power to small campaign donors: Letters

I was excited to read that the Los Angeles Ethics Commission is proposing to strengthen the city’s system of public financing of campaigns by matching small contributions on a 6-to-1 basis. That is exactly what we need to do to help give small donors, including me, more input. This would also help reduce the influence of big money in our city’s politics and would allow politicians to spend less time on fundraising and more on issues and problem-solving.

I urge the Ethics Commission or City Council to take the recommendation of Public Campaign and the California Clean Money Campaign to lower the level of contributions that can be matched since many citizens in Los Angeles cannot afford to contribute $500. This system, with the lower limit, seems to work well in New York. Let’s adopt it here so that L.A. will be more responsive to its residents.

— Teresa Priem, Northridge

Kudos to Nury Martinez for cleaning up community

Re “Valley ban on ‘adult’ businesses wins OK” (May 14):

A huge round of applause for City Councilwoman Nury Martinez for her efforts to stop us from becoming the strip-club community of the San Fernando Valley.

If the council had her foresight in 1970, when it voted for the first topless bar to open on Van Nuys Boulevard, we wouldn’t have lost the wonderful, safe environment my family had enjoyed since 1947. Thanks to adult entertainment, prostitutes on the prowl and lewd billboards, we have lost all the nice stores, including the Broadway, Robinson’s, Ohrbach’s and Montgomery Ward, and the lifestyle they provided.

Can you help clean up Sepulveda Boulevard?

— Irene Brezina, Panorama City

First Amendment should protect Donald Sterling

It’s time to end the witch hunt over Clippers owner Donald Sterling. The whole idea that a comment made in private can be turned into an excuse to launch a lynch-mob-style hysteria ought to be repugnant in a free country. The entire affair is right out of some totalitarian police state.

Are we to repeal the First Amendment and replace it with commissariats which will examine all statements before they are allowed to be made and consign politically incorrect speakers to a new version of the Gulag? There’s a long history of this sort of liberal intolerance.

Advertisement

Sterling supported liberal causes, but this was not enough to save him. It’s unfortunate the media is joining the pack instead of defending free speech.

Do you really want to live in a society where an off-hand remark can be turned into an excuse for a witch hunt? What is next? So-called “hate speech” laws that will criminalize citizens who dare dissent against prevailing liberal policies? Such laws are already in force in many European countries.

People ask why Americans are arming. When you have a government that refuses to defend First Amendment rights, citizens start looking to the Second Amendment for defense. It’s time for all of us to stand up and say enough before it is too late.